In our present talent-hungry marketplace, one of the greatest challenges that organizations face is to successfully attract, assess, train and retain talented employees in a coordinated fashion.  Talent Management (TM) has arisen from HR to address these challenges. It is the end-to-end and integrated process of planning, recruiting, developing, managing, and compensating employees throughout the organization.

Overcoming the challenges of holistic talent management lies in the integration of what are currently the discreet operations in most organizations. Technology must enable this process but it cannot be the driver. An integrative and talent-centric “mindset” and initiatives led by a senior executive with overall responsibility for talent is critical. Much has been written about the benefits of integrated talent management. What has been less discussed and researched is the employee’s role in integrated talent management – what can and should employees participate in for their benefit and the benefit of the organization?

In this regard, the Human Capital Institute, with Workscape, Inc. conducted a survey of its membership to identify current market perceptions and emerging needs surrounding the integration of benefits and talent management solutions into a single, “employee-centric” solution offered on an integrated platform.

Integrated Talent Management

Skilled human capital is the most important element in running a successful business. TM touches a wide range of Human Capital Management (HCM) disciplines such as Performance Management, Workforce Planning, Skills Management, Succession Planning, Recruiting, and Resource Scheduling. In order to garner the greatest competitive advantage from the organization’s resources, an organization needs to bring these processes into an integrated whole.

Six areas stand out as key elements within this framework:

• Competency and skills management: These pieces of the workforce-planning puzzle help organizations identify the critical talents essential for each role within the company. The result is a skills foundation that becomes the baseline for monitoring the success of all other components
• Recruitment: The first step in hiring the right talent is being able to accurately evaluate candidates to match their skills to the requirements of current openings and future business goals
• Learning management: A learning Management System helps determine skills gaps in key positions and provides a way to bring workers up to necessary levels
• Performance management: For ongoing auditing and monitoring of talent productivity, this important area compares and connects employee performance results to organizational objectives
• Compensation: Proper rewards, including base and incentive pay and equities, help HR staff and line managers recognize achievements and push employees to strive for higher levels of effectiveness. The concept of Total Rewards links compensation and benefits to each element of the talent lifecycle
• Career and succession planning: This area provides a window into what's possible—the new roles and responsibilities that represent growth and advancement for each worker. A ready pool of internal talent that's anxious to expand its abilities and help the organization fill its skills gaps.

Employee-Centric Talent Management
In looking at the benefits of making employees central, throughout the talent lifecycle, acquisition is as good a place to start as any. Where acquisition is concerned, employee involvement, through a formal referral program is, inarguably, the best method of recruiting by every meaningful measure (cost per hire, quality of hire, time to performance and length of retention). Most organizations know this and do it well. Two areas that are less developed in organizations (in terms of employee involvement) are development and succession planning. Both stood out in our research as key areas in which to put employees at the center and allow them to drive the process in partnership with management.

Today, especially among younger generations, learning is a real-time, continuous activity involving media of all sorts and encompassing everything from traditional classroom training to gaming and virtual world technologies as well of a myriad of work-based, on-the-job type learning. Our findings confirmed the importance of allowing employees to determine their own development plans, including accommodation for the method(s) of learning they respond to best and scheduling of training.

Where employees are at the center of the talent management lifecycle, they are better able to understand what it takes to be considered “top talent” and to be a part of the leadership succession pool. Some employees, even top performers, will opt out. Others will be more engaged in becoming and staying a part of that pool – which is what a high performing organization desires. Today, of course, most succession management is secretive and opaque with talent far from the center.

Career pathing, whether leading to leadership or not, is too often non-existent in organizations. Our research found that where employees are given more involvement in charting their own paths, including paths to leadership, the system runs more fluidly and less expensively „Ÿ and talent is likely to stay longer.

Allen is President and Executive Director, Human Capital Institute. Tony is Chief Marketing Officer for Workscape, Inc. Access the full research report at http://www.workscape.com/library/library.aspx#whitepapers.